Goodbyes at the Ending of the Year-The Rights and Wrongs of It.

In the ending of the year it seems as if every single program I watch is scrolling a list of the famous and infamous who have passed away in the 362 days since January 1. Each year will lose some notable. The facts are immutable, our corporeal bodies pass through the birth canal and drop into the light of this world. If lucky we age and then die. Star or serf we all pass through this world feeling love and pain, hope and despair.

This year a couple of comedy performers seem to top the lists. A jazz musician, a poet and several politicians fill out the middle of the most recent list I have seen. Two noble laureates ended up a the bottom of this list with hushed reverence from the narrator.

People like my brother in law John Davis don't make these lists. John lived in metropolitan Chicago. What did he accomplish. Well coming from a youth filled with challenges he married a good smart and talented woman and raised some great kids. Because he wasn't in the public eye should he be any less mourned? I think not. We all live lives that can have merit. My thought is that we should compile our own lists and turn off these TV programs.

American has for many years had a cult of celebrity. It is a nasty business. In order to forget about our lives for a moment, and I guess our struggles, we turn on TV and watch programs that tell us about the stars stints in rehab. We are bombarded by images of their infidelities. We are told of the misdeeds of their youth and their current loutish behavior. Why do we need to look at these images? When we are drawn in to this celebrity watching we are no better than people gawking as they pass a car wreck with bodies beneath tarps.

I have no problems with reading fiction because it requires time and discipline. I don't have any problem with seeing a movie or a television series. A movie forces me to sit for just about two hours and relax. Images fill my brain and I turn off my worries and struggles. A good television series can do the same thing but when you put in on the DVR you steal more and more of your free time. Life must have some diversions, it absolutely must.

What I have a problem with is that I don't need to know a damn thing about the writer or the actor. Let their work stand for itself. I don't really care if the creator of a moving tome is a chronic public flasher. That issue is between him, the law and his psychotherapist. And when a actor, a hockey player or a politician dies that take no more of this world with them than each of our sisters and brothers do when that pass.

Will the lists at year's end stop, well no. Should we walk away from the cult of celebrity and the industries that feed on it, yes. Will we? No. However I allow myself the hope that someday we can come to a sense of perspective and that EW, People and Entertainment Tonight will fade from such prominent view. Someday I hope we spend more time with those about us honoring them.

Fare Thee Well Joe

12-22-14

Joe Cocker died today, at least that is what the Huffington Post says. I never saw Joe but his music was an important part of the soundtrack of my life. When he sang those songs on Sheffield Steel I could really feel him reaching down into his gut to let us know what the lyrics meant. Some many camping mornings fire going having that post breakfast Labbatt 50 the boom box was blaring that disk over and over again.

To some he was a joke and people laughed at those onstage gyrations. But in a studio with the right production team he could create a personal anthem again and again. He was grittier and dirtier than that smokey whiskey voice of Van Morrison. He had more energy hidden in each syllable that he sang that any of the “stars” created by the hit making machines on TV today.

Mr. Cocker we will miss you.

Saturday before Thanksgiving Year of our Lord 2014

It is the day before the Todd family celebrates Thanksgiving at our local Lutheran Church. As the local weather report says on my phone there is a fine ice mist going on this morning. Francie is downstairs preparing to brine the turkey. Me, I am listening to a CBC Morning Show on Radio One. There weather at both locales East Lansing and Ottawa sounds about the same right now, cold and crappy.

The host is having folks bring in breakfast foods. There has been a frittata, some blueberry French toast and a tenderloin omelet so far. I am growing quite hungry. I did go down and grab about a third of a pumpkin pie bagel to hold me until breakfast. A woman with a delightful accent is now talking about welsh cakes. She is asserting that they are wonderful for breakfast. 
 
Another guest is a singer named Jeremy Fisher. He just performed a Christmas song called, “I owe, I owe, I owe”. Quite cute. The host is asking Jeremy now about the stories that the performer offers up between songs, “Are they true?” Mr. Fisher responds that his memory is additive and that as time goes by the story gets warped a bit here and a twisted tad there as he responds to each audience he faces. He is a fun guest and a passable performer.

 A new dish is being offered up for the breakfast. She says it is a bit of a muffelet. It is an omelet cooked in a muffin tray. Bread, stuffed at the bottom of the tin, add eggs and cheese and bake. Sounds good. Me, I don’t think that is an omelet. Sounds to me more like a scrambled egg bake. I have tried making those throwing in some crisped up maple bacon. Not bad but the kids did not like the odd texture.

As I was out of the room the program shifted to world news. Apparently there is a security summit in Halifax and John McCain is screaming that our policy toward the Islamic State is in his word “delusional”. Yeah, it is time to change the station. Off to Pandora. The first song that comes up is one called Dreamer or Believer, the very catchy hook is “The worst is behind him, love is gonna find him. He’s good no troubles that a dollar won’t cure.” The singer is Jimmy Gardreau. I love my Pandora “Wake the Dead” station.

As to my breakfast I can smell the scent of a ham steak working its way up the stairwell from the kitchen. Five or six days of the week oatmeal. Today will be a piece of ham and most likely an omelet. Saturday mornings are good morning. If the ice doesn’t linger I will most likely go to work late this afternoon or early evening. I will try and rally the troops to go cut our Christmas tree midday. This means bringing the boxes of Christmas stuff up from the basement today. Ah how quickly the year has flown by. Have a Great Day and may the turkey be with you come week’s end.

If You Haven't Ever Heard Me Give a Speech

A few weeks ago I gave a speech on meditation. If you haven't seen me speak in a long time or ever here is a link that will allow you to do that. Start at about the 38 minute mark. http://www.law.msu.edu/video/index.html​

The Speech I Gave Last Night on Meditation

Hello, I'm an administrative law examiner for the State of Michigan. 

I meditate daily. I am not afraid to admit it. What do I mean by saying I meditate? 

Well, I get to my office between about 7:40 a.m. Almost always I am the first person there. As I juggle my stuff walking in the door I turn the office alarm off. My lunch goes into the refrigerator, I start a pot of decaffeinated coffee and I go to my office.

 After struggling with my keys I set my bags down on a table. My office is windowless so I turn n a small floor lamp. After I close my door I unroll a little yoga mat behind my desk and put on some ancient music. I like ancient choruses without instrumental accompaniment in Latin. I can’t understand a damn word of it but it is very, pretty and soothing. Then I sit with my legs folded on the mat.

 For about 10 minutes while in this posture I try and clear my mind of everything. I just let all my thoughts flow by and just try empty my consciousness. 

That is the sum of my practice. I have been doing this for probably five years on a regular basis at my office. As I sit and listen to the singing I am mentally taken to a peaceful place. It calms me. Mentally it moves me into a cool calm almost holy space. In this state I let go of the world and its problems, just for now. My breathing slows and I feel real rest coming to my bones. With my thoughts clearing I can see, I can discern. 

Meditation isn’t a philosophy, a theology, an ism or any method or path. It just is. Discernment and calm, these are the things I touch when meditating. I meditate because I need a respite from stress. What kind of stress do I have you ask? 

Well let's see every day I listen to seven different people who've come in for a hearing tell me their problems. They do this with passion as they plead for restoration of their driving license privileges. People tell me about horrible things; sexual assault, child abuse, infidelity, grievous disease and failed dreams. Most people lay out this parade of tragedy to explain why they drank or drugged too much in the past. 

 Also I hear from people who killed their best friend because they flipped a coin to see who was going to drive because they were both too inebriated to be behind the wheel. Yeah it's pretty nasty stuff isn’t it. 

At about 15,000 hearings I've done to date over 15 years it still takes a toll every time. 

 And then I go home. My wife has a great job but it's pretty high stress too. So if I want to unwind by working through my day’s emotional onslaught with her as my amateur psychologist I have to do it reciprocally and take on her traumas in exchange. Sigh.

My kids well nothing stressful there. One of my children has Aspergers and the other ADD. One is like Robin Williams nonstop all the time and the other wants everyone to be totally quiet for long as possible. Do you see any disconnect, any source of dissonance. Is there I ask you perhaps the germ of stress there?

 Over time this life was taking its toll on me. A few years back I was eating achiphex like candy. But then one day about five years ago I was walking through the old Barnes & Noble in East Lansing. I saw a magazine up in the bright sunlight windows that caught my eye. It was called Tricycle. A vividly colored piece of art on the cover drew me in. The first article I flipped to had a title like “Just Sit." The article went on to talk about some of the healing qualities of meditation. Things like lower heart rate lower blood pressure better general overall health stood out as I read it. 

Throwing down my five dollar bill I bought the magazine. How was I to know I just bought into meditation? 

 The article I read simply talked about sitting. It talked about not fighting the ideas that flitted through you mind. It urged getting on a mat and just breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. Let the ideas pass by but don’t grab onto them. Don’t make a list. Let the quiet settle in. 

 This wasn't the first time I’d been introduced to meditation. I am a Delaware attorney. Delaware has a three day bar exam. Between day two and day three the bar exam I was hospitalized with chest pains. By the time I got to the hospital I was in tachycardia, my heart was at two hundred beats a minute. It wasn’t a heart attack I had a condition that is known as Wolf Parkinson White, there is an extra electrical pathway across my heart that makes it race when I'm stressed. The net impact is that when you're stressed like say standing in the court room making an argument trying to win your client some money you can faint or better yet die. 

Great time to learn your body can’t handle oral argument, after three years of law school and two thirds of the bar exam. 

 Given my career path was set my cardiologist suggested that I learn some relaxation techniques. I picked up a book called "Minding The Body Mending The Mind." It was one of the best things I ever did. In that tome I found a crash course on relaxation techniques. Breathe in through your nose slowly filling your lungs and let the air pass across your lips on the way out. Alternatively lie on the floor and relax every muscle in your body. 

These two techniques from the book have stood the test of time for me. I used these techniques for a number of years. 

However when I left Delaware and got the private practice in Michigan I was always rushed I was always stressed and I lost touch with how to handle stress. I ignored the things I knew on how to give my bodily and mental systems a break. 

Failing to meditate early in the day means I will get lost in the day. Meditation is an act that focuses my being. When I say lost in the day I mean my focus is drawn in a 100 directions and I don’t seem to accomplish anything. My prioritizations schemes all fail. 

 For me the act of centering my mind is as natural and necessary as taking a shower to cleanse my body. If I don’t take my shower say because I know I have heavy work to do that will require sweat and or exposure to gunky things (image cleaning a wet basement), my day is thrown off also. Showering just gets me to the starting point of the day. Maybe what I am saying is I like to start the day clean mentally and physically, a tabla rasa as it were. 

Meditation can be as simple as walking about and just forcing me to be in the moment. Look there is a tree. Smell the bakery. See the light glinting oddly off the windows up there. For me the bindings of stress are loosened through practice/meditation. The emptying of the grocery bag of the mind and the ditching of the daily list punches a hole through the mental garbage that can overwhelm me Meditation gives me perspective. 

Were I to hold anger or resentment about what seem to be injustices in, the dark nature of those feelings would kill me. Some days I suspect my irritations at others and at myself have already planted the seeds to my doom and that the harvest will come due soon. Maybe that sense or belief that internalizing hurt and rage is unhealthy is why in my later years I am drawn to meditation. 

October Grey

 

October when it comes to Michigan is an affair of contrasts. One day might be clear and the temperature could be in the 70s; maybe just shirt sleeves would be more than enough cover against the weather. But the the fronts roll in one after another each dragging with it A drop in the temperature and mist or in hail and alternately snow.

October is a period of transition. Daylight is decreasing at a very precipitous rate.

Living through October is a time when you come to understand dread. With October's passing me realize that winter is not a fable, that it is not simply going to skip you by this year and it is a hard reality with which you must live. October you watch the clouds that mark a front closely.

Imagine

Sometimes an image can take you back to particular place and time. This picture puts me silently and solidly in 1974. It is as if it was an album cover to the mysterious music that would provide the soundtrack to my life.

Gothic

North woods - 1930s Dream Sequence

Kiss the Sky

Toys. We all seem to love toys don’t we?  

Of late the toys that have the most attraction for me are electronic.  Despite what you are thinking most of them don’t make whirring sounds.

The iPhone 6 came out a few weeks ago and I had to have one.  I went from store to store but they were all sold out.  Finally on a dreary Saturday morning early I stopped into a mall AT&T store and they had two.  Both were the huge ones, 128GB of memory.  Didn’t matter I bought a silver one.

Understand the reason why I had been wanting a new phone. Phones by themselves are utilitarian.  A flip phone is enough to converse and text with people.  No this unit is not for talking, that to me is irrelevant.  I desired the camera.  So much of my life has gone undocumented. Many of my creative urges have been thwarted. Why, because of the lack of a decent photographic instrument. 

My old phone was an iPhone 4s.  Over the years I started to use the camera.  As I did I realized I could be creative.  

As time passed I downloaded several photographic editing applications.  I got BeFunky.  Mostly I use this to insert text into photos.  I also picked up a copy of TimerCam Pro so that I could take shots on a 5, 10 or 30 second delay.  (Now Apple has added its own timer to the software).  I also grabbed PS Express and Wood Camera.  PS is clean, almost elegant editing software.  It allows you to adjust temperature and exposure and to crop shots easily.  Wood Camera does the same thing but it has some very interesting color filters.  Usually I do the basic editing work with PS and adjust the color scheme with Wood.

Over the past few nights I have been trying to take some night photography.  I did a Google search for night photo apps and came up with two, NightCap Pro and another.  The reviews showed that both had their fans.  I ended up going with NightCap.  Using my little Joby tripod I thought with this I might be able to get some decent shots. The documentation online for NightCap Pro is thin but I think I am starting to get the hang of the icons and what they control.

Both last night and the night before I was playing around outside using my phone camera trying to capture images of the moon.  Yeah the neighbors were getting a hoot out of me lying on the driveway surface pointing my little phone up toward the sky in the dark, dark evening. One guy with his dog stopped and starred.  He did not ask what I was doing, he just starred.  The above is what I captured. 

Time is short for me my friends at least comparatively so. For all of us from the class of 1974 these next ten or fifteen years are a time of summing up and putting the bows on the package of our lives. In the years I have left I want to capture a glimpse of something elusive and beautiful. Then I want to create something meaniful from it.  Me and my iPhone camera, it is my way of counting the railroad ties or flipping the hammer and affirming life.

Reflection

Thursday, this be a cold day. Dark and drear the hangs the sky.  A grey pall lies over the fading greens of summer. The muted light quiets the bursting golds and bright reds of autumn.  

 

A soundtrack for this day would be a raw edged ballad about loss and longing, Steve Earle singing in his whiskey and cigarette ravaged voice about some love gone bad to bullets.

 

I will walk this day a see what there is that can catch an eye and provide joy to a weary spirit.  The common cold has overtaken me and I ache. Worse yet I have liquid oozing from my nostrils and Kleenex are flying off my desk.  Still I will stuff a wad of tissues in my pockets and head off.  A walk it is then.

 

[Time Passes]

 

In the shades of grey in which the world is draped I found a small wonder.  Walking by the office of an insurance screening agency I caught my image in the mirrored glass.  I looked a window ahead and there it was.  A tree showing all the glory of fall reflected in a distorted softened image.  Like I said a walk can provide joy for a weary spirit.

There Is Light Beyond These Woods

I was going out for short walk. Somehow the night's oncoming sky caught my eye. With my new camera in hand I stood in the middle of the street and pointed my lens toward the western sky. What I saw was enough to give me the peace I needed for a little while.

Sing we now of autumn's harvest

The summer is drawing to a close now. The transition struck me as I was riding into my office this morning. The walnut trees were dropping their yellow leaves. There was a certain air about the pathway I took in. It was not cold it was warm it was the space between seasons.

I grab this picture last night to see how my camera was working. I think it captures the autumn light and the decay of the season. There's nothing wrong or malicious in the changing of the seasons. It is simply life following it's path like a river flowing to a sea.

Mid Month

Time has slipped by so very fast this month. With the return of the students to the educational process my telephone rings, my e-mail box fills and my calendar becomes over burdened with meetings. Issues at schools generate calls and meetings for a member of the Board of Education. Add to this the needs of my own sometimes very needy children and each tiny elusive bit of spare time I ever had disappeared.

Last night I went to a meeting at the middle school. I represent this school as an agent of the Board of Education. I carry our concerns to them, provide them a history of recent policy choices and I carry back their petitions for assistance relative to their school’s unique circumstances.

The meeting was fine but the people had to learn process. I have been doing this so long that running into someone who is not intimately versed in basic parliamentary procedure is refreshing. Learning process/teaching process was time consuming but refreshing. The meeting started at 6:30. I had left my office at 5:40. Between those two moments I had dinner at home. Post meeting I got home at 9:05 p.m. I had to get up this morning at 6 a.m. Tell me where is the spare time in that cycle? Tonight I will do it again.

The only old joy I have rediscovered in past several weeks is the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. Monday through Wednesday I hold my own scribbling down answers. Thursdays I may give it a try; that is a 50/50 proposition. I don’t bother with Friday’s it is just too weird. My son as a university student gets a “free” copy of the Times tied to his student fees and tuition. The value of that paper shall we say does not even cover the daily interest on his student loans on which I am a guarantor. I digress.

A crossword is a joy for a person with a vocabulary and with some bit of logical sense. Sussing out puns and word play keeps the mind keen and alive. To actually complete two puzzles on sequential days just seems like enough achievement to make me wake up the next morning. Oh I am old if the promise of a crossword puzzle is what keeps me going. Hookers and blow and loud, loud music in the old days sparked life but now dead trees folded into a quarter sheet attacked with ink is enough.

Rites of Passage

American high school contains so many rights of passage. There are dances, i.e. the Winter Formal, Homecoming, etc. There are awards ceremonies. There are various pranks including egg wars and the like.

Homecoming week has all sorts of odd quirks. Some involve dress-up, you know the stuff kids loved to do until they got laughed at for it. Today was “Would you still love me if I was wearing this day?”

Got to say the younger child has flair.

Bible Moment - Not My Norm

As I was reading my devotional today I came upon this snippet from the Psalms. I liked it. Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake me when my strength is gone. For my enemies speak against me; those who wait to kill me conspire together. They say, “God has forsaken him; pursue him and seize him, for no one will rescue him.” Do not be far from me, Divine Spirit; come quickly to help me. From Psalm 71

Leaf Falling In September

My larder is empty of decaffeinated coffee. If you are wondering why I would open with that statement it is a personal internal declaration that I want some. Sitting in my beautiful back yard a place not too warm nor too cold I could enjo...y the taste of coffee (alas sadly without the stimulant effect). The aroma would make a difference. To me just the smell of coffee makes me feel warm and full; the dark rich fragrance elicits relaxation responses. Right now I smell the fullness of green summer bursting with fruit and seed. What a wonderful bouquet, these scents I am enjoying are of life. But the aroma of coffee would make the moment perfect.

Funny the wind just changed there for a moment and I smelled something caramelizing. Sweet deeply cooked but not burnt it had the smell of boardwalk caramel corn from the vendor at 7th Street in Ocean City New Jersey. Now it is gone. Everywhere I hear tools of lawn work. The edgers and weedwhackers, the mowers and hedge trimmers are a constant drone and then they surge and they return to the steady hum of a Briggs and Straton ½ hours small motor. Whirrrrr and ptptptpt at the lower end of hearing come at me from all sides, east and west, north and south.

The breeze carries the slightest whiff of gasoline and oil. And when the company of conformers is done bringing things into line with unspoken neighborhood norms I will smell new mown grass and rich dirt smells. Why am I not among the busy? Well the air, the humidity and the sun have conspired to give me only the second perfect day of the summer. Do you think I should give up a perfect day just so that someone can think I love my lawn? No sir, not me. I am going to sit out here at this little glass table beneath my market umbrella and write of the joy of watching small golden leaves fall. We don’t get many of these days. The leaf I just watched spiral and turn danced for me and me alone as the bird behind me went cawlll, cawlll.

The dance done will only be done once. The spinning toward earth in erratic but perfectly beautiful choreographed motion is a command performance never to be repeated. Who would expect me to surrender this suite of joyful sensations for the mundane mowing and mulching? Much like Jesus when he said the poor will always be with you, I say the chores both necessary and ephemeral will always be with you.

The wind has changed again and someone appears to have taken on the task of slow cooking meat in a smoker. Ah the joys of idling about on a summer day

The Screen Door

A door closed today.

In a hammock my form stretched and twisted until pleasant comfort was found.

My glasses were pushed high upon my forehead.

Squinting I read about how eyes can and must see afresh a poem read long ago.

The words remain unchanged but the meaning shifts as when light fails across a sundial.

Throughout the day the light is the same light from the same old star

But as the moments pass the shadow falls differently and a reading of the shadow and of the light marks a different thing, an hour gone.
A poet's words are both light and shadow in the head and in the heart.

Gold green the grass dances in the perfect breeze on this perfect day.

The scent of grilled food is carried by the perfect breeze on this perfect late afternoon.

I napped today as my magazine fell aside me.

It was an honest nap.

It was a nap of freedom such as I have not felt in many, many days.

I may have drooled.

I may have snored.

A squirrel, the squirrels???? was/were working overtime in the old walnut tree.

Bang.  Rustle, rustle….bang.

Walnuts struck down on the old deck’s wood and woke me from lost moments

I dreamt sweetly of old flesh and kind words.

I dreamt deeply knowing the end is so much closer than the start of the path and that

                this late summer reverie will be gone in just a moment.

The sense of infinite time pouring through my fingers left me with that dream,

And with the banging of walnuts upon the deck.

A door closed today, a screen door with gossamer webbing but life is now forever divided.

Full On Sweet Mystery

In summer’s fading glory there is joy sublime.  Patches of once vibrant but now slightly dusky flowers abound. Breath deep and you will sense of both infinite and finite time.  The blooms upon the flowers still strike the eye from afar.  Upon closer inspection even the untrained eye can see the tints of age have started to scar.  Bright red and yellow and purple flowers abound shout out to the eyes of bees and bugs and humankind I am here, I am alive for this glorious moment.  They roar singing let me fill you heart. But the end of the green stems supporting them grow straw-like and burnt/brittle at the edges.

The glory of the flower takes us away from the finite moment into an eternity of delicious joy, I would call these moments the time of ripe peaches.  As the liquid from that soft fleshy fruit drizzles down after you take a mouthful the sweetness is fully satisfying, almost as sensual as great sex.  The sloppy joy of the sweet taste take us beyond this mortal space into a moment of eternity.

This single summer’s kingdom will come falling down.  Look my friend, you can see it in the silvering leaves of the trees.  This year’s time of short sleeves, short pants and water play will be done soon.  The beaches where we retreated seeking relief from the heat will soon be cold and desolate places. But when you see flowers full and exploding you suspend the reality of time and age and fragility. The tall grasses blowing back and forth with full beard let the clock slow for a minute so that it tick-tock-tick cannot even be perceived.  The thumping of the human heart is lost in the background. 

In the summer warmth of late August I will wrap my warped and worried frame in the joyful colors of the spectrum.  I will let the bird song and the rhythmic hymn of bees’ wings seduce me and hypnotize me into believing this will be forever. Let us celebrate the time of sweet tastes and perfume like smells. Let us revel in the sounds of nature wildly at work, the rustling grass and the buzzing bee.  Let the soft grass be our bed. Let our eyes be awash in the royal purple of lavender as time winds down on this short eternity.

Walking Toward the Water

Last day at the beach today. Waking early (after sunrise but out of the house by 7:40 a.m.) I made my trek the 3 or 4 blocks to Wawa for 20 ounces of decaffeinated coffee. While there I grabbed a cookie and a Philadelphia Inquirer. This my friends was the breakfast of my youth or some variant of it.

Walking out of the packed store (man those Wawas are busy first thing in the morning) I adjusted my purchase, cookie in pocket and paper under my arm. Standing just off the concrete steps that led to the entrance I was trying to make that decision, do I walk up to the boardwalk and eat this or do I instead walk back to the house and sit on the breezy deck to enjoy it? Pondering this I noticed a gentleman about 10 years older than me riding his bicycle up to the store. He was puffing a little bit.

“Good morning,” says I as he begins to dismount. Do all us older men look alike? Is there a handbook we read somewhere we read inadvertently absorbing the information but forgetting the source? The gent was wearing the outfit of virtually all the men of my age, nondescript tan shorts, sneakers, a knit off white shirt with two (maybe three) buttons at the top and a ball cap from an event five years ago.

He looked at me as he got off the bike and said, “I am too old for this shit.” He was panting from the bike ride because it has gotten quite humid this morning. I smiled and looked at him and said, “We do this shit so we don’t feel any older than we have to.” He laughed. “Yeah,” he said “We don’t get to be any younger but we don’t have to fall to pieces.” I responded with an, “Absolutely, look at me, two of the three things I am doing are in complete accordance with my cardiologist’s directions. I am walking and this coffee is decaf. The cookie in my pocket well not so much.” He responded, “I am here for my chocolate dipped double donut. I am not supposed to have it either. You know what pal, we have to eat ‘em here and eat ‘em now because we are going to be dead a long, long time and I doubt we’ll get donuts then” Point taken.

After we talked about where his was from (Montgomery County) I shared where I was from (East Lansing Michigan home of the Spartans). He asked me why I was back and I told him to see an old friend and to go to my 40th high school class reunion. The second round of where are your really from began Salem County in my case and South Philly somewhere down Broad Street in his. By this time he had stopped panting. As we both turned to go our separate ways we laughed, waved and wished each other a good day. My choice was made I was headed up to the boardwalk.

Why the boardwalk? Like the man said I doubt when you are dead there are many sunrises to appreciate. I placed my folded paper up under my arm and sipped my hot brown dirty water and made my way to the beach’s edge. I walked down the beach entry pathway mat to a point where I could see across the strand. The sun was a few degrees above the horizon and was cutting a silver swath across the water’s surface. One family with their balloon tired beach cart was making its way to the water’s edge.

I could hear joggers and bicycles behind me on the boardwalk going to and fro. I could also hear the sounds of the gulls spinning in the sky above looking for that tidbit that morsel. Pulling out my phone I took a few shots of what lay out there in front of me. What was I looking at well God’s great Atlantic Ocean and all of eternity as far as I am concerned. I stood there for a moment just soaking it in. As Paul Bowles said and I am paraphrasing there are moments, events if you would, that happen at places that you cannot imagine your life being without. But those seminal moments don’t come very often and then they are gone forever.

Staring out across a nearly empty swath of sand was and remains one of those seminal moments for me. It was with a little regret that I turned and walked back up the path to the boardwalk to find a bench so as to allow me to eat that cookie and read the news of this irrelevant day conveniently. My coffee was cooler and the cookie wasn’t as crisp as it might have been. But I could hear the waves and feel the sun beginning to warm another beach day. Carpe diem, not really. Rather let the day wash over me with sun and sand and humid air and squalling children and screeching birds and sand between my toes. I may never be back again but I am here now and today is a day to be savored.

Summer's Glory

Summer's glory arrives at days end. It is an admixture, a concoction or maybe a distillation of so many wonderful things.

You can start with sleeping in on a comfortable bed and soft sheets. Breakfast with coffee from a nearby shop and fried ham on Italian rolls adds to the growing joy.

A cloudless day with warm temperatures and a sea breeze adds more to the sense of delight. Reading leisurely a yellowed and brittle  little paperback novel just adds so much more. 

And then clams, flounder and fries. And conversation with good people about things that matter to us. There may be better days somewhere but I really want to savor this one.

Tinny Speaker

Mosquitos are out in force tonight. Blood is being shed as I try to focus and get something down. At the end of my blood splotched arm sits my cell phone. Lying there on the glass table top the black rounded rectangle is playing the Lucy Kaplansky station on Pandora.  Of course I could play the very same station on the tiny stereo speakers on my laptop but that would be too complicated right now.  Far enough away from the house the Wi-Fi gets kind of dicey. I still have unlimited data so I am going to use the 4G. I want to make sure I get uninterrupted sound right now.  Buffering is a mood breaker.

Hearing the monaural mix playing out of the tiny iPhone speaker brings me back to a different time.  If I close my eyes I am in such a different place.  Suddenly eight year old myopic me is heading down south to visit my grandmother.  With that car nearly flying we were headed to Horry County. Bouncing in shorts in the front of an old American boat of a car I am listening to the radio. Funny the delivery of sound then and at this moment have certain similarities.

Sometimes I remember riding in the middle of the front seat of a Ford Galaxy 500 travelling down U.S. 301.  Some distance south of the Mason-Dixon Line the telephone poles with their faint green glass insulators fly by.  The old man might be talking about safety, he hated old three lane highways and railroad crossing without warning lights. My brother and sister might be squabbling.  It might have been 1963, the car might have been a Galaxie and I might have been seven but we were rolling.  One thing was sure my brother was longing for some serious southern fireworks.

But I am not really remembering anyone else in the car. Also it not so much the sights of the green world flying by I remember.  What I have pulled from storage because this little speaker is playing beside me is a dashboard image. I am looking at the chrome knobs and buttons of that a.m. radio that sat dead ahead of me when I rode in the center spot.

Through a tiny speaker on the dash came my favorite songs, the sing along tunes that would be played repeatedly on Top 40 stations until we got down below Richmond.  Songs like Puff the Magic Dragon and I’m Henry the VIII would come on. At the first strum I would know the song and then I got to sing at the top of my lungs much to the chagrin of my much older siblings in the car.  Sometimes Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction would come on and the old man would twist the dial and change the station. Damn commie music. There are some other phrases that might have flown out right then but I shall opt not to remember those now.

It was important to get as much of this music as I could early on in the trip. Once you got south of Richmond all you got were farm reports, the price of tobacco and the like or serious twang. Today that hard old country twang, think George Jones singing White Lightning or anything in the Jim Reeves catalog would be music to my ears, not so much then. Sometimes on that tinny speaker the further down you went there were trading shows.  In a thick old time North Carolina accent can’t you just hear Bob in Wilson (home of Parker’s Barbeque) who has a set of barely used white walls asking if anybody would want to trade for a full sized bed and a chest of drawers?

But what I remember is the music or the news came out of that centered little speaker. No matter what else happened in that car we all had one ear open and focused on what the radio waves were bringing us. The windows were down and the air was hot.  In 1964 the old man wasn’t ready to pop for air conditioning even if it might have been an option. The people in the back seat wanted the sound turned up because of the roar of the air going by on that old U.S. highway drowned out the radio if it was set too low.  The people in the front seat, the more senior members in the car were not of like mind. 

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Was it there my radio ear was created? I spent the next several decades listening for the next cool song, the next thing that would spark my aural imagination.  I don’t know but I remember begging whoever was sitting next to me in the passenger seat to turn the knob to see if we could catch one of those songs I loved before it was too late.